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Annotation:Keep the Country Bonny Lassie
X:2 T:Keep the Country Bonny Lassie M:C| L:1/8 R:Reel S:Bremner - Scots Reels c. 1757 Z:AK/Fiddler's Companion K:A e | A/A/A T(cA) B>cdf | A/A/A T(cA) eATcA | dfce B>cdf | ecaf Te2A :| |: g | (a/g/f/e/) ce B>cdg | (a/g/f/e/) ce (a/g/f/e/) ce | dfca B>cdf | (e/f/g a)f Te2A :|]
KEEP THE COUNTRY BONNIE/BONNY LASSIE/LASS. AKA - "Na càill a Chailag ladhach." AKA and see “Let's shak her Weall," "Wood of Fyvie (The).” Scottish, Reel. A Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AB (McGlashan): AAB (Athole, Gow, Honeyman, Kerr, Lowe): AABB (Bremner, Vickers): AABB'(Skye). John Glen (1891) finds the earliest printing of this tune in Robert Bremner's 1757 collection, but it was earlier published in London by Daniel Wright as "Let's shak her Weall" in his Aria di Camera (1724). Early Scottish versions are also contained in the manuscript collections of dancing master and fiddler David Young under the title "Wood of Fyvie (The)." There is a Scottish country dance called Keep the Country Bonny Lassie that was once danced in parts of Ettrick (taught by a country dance master named James Laidlaw), though Flett & Flett believe it never attained much popularity under the title (or danced to this this tune). The same figures were danced to "Duke of Perth" ("Brown's Reel") and "Pease Strae," called by the names of those tunes, and appeared to be much more widespread in the 19th century.
